Aaron Burr was (Probably) Here

A growing number of agents are digging deep to find nuggets of history in a property's past—even when the claim to fame is trivial or tangential at best. Pitching the Beverly Hills home of the Cowardly Lion.

Al Capone, Aaron Burr, Betty Grable and Don Johnson. These are just a few examples of historical name dropping in the real-estate market. Stefanos Chen takes a look at the tactics around hawking a property with a backstory. Photo: Claudio Papapietro for The Wall Street Journal.

Bella Ross lives on one of the most infamous landmarks in American history: the site of the 1804 duel between Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton and Vice President Aaron Burr, which mortally wounded one and turned the other into a fugitive. Or at least she lives near it, probably.

When she and her husband, John, decided to list their Weehawken, N.J., property, their real-estate agents created an eight-page brochure inviting prospective buyers to "own a part of American history." "We wanted to give it a nice flavoring—it's not just another mansion," said Helena Lobo-Zagorski, one of the listing agents with Prominent Properties Sotheby's International Realty, adding that words like "historical" are powerful in luxury real estate. The couple's 7,000-square-foot, recently built home went on the market in May for $6.95 million; it was previously listed at $7.5 million in 2010, and taken off the market in January, 2012.

Old Yarns, New Listings

This Weehawken, N.J., home is being marketed as having ties to the site of the 1804 duel between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. Claudio Papapietro for The Wall Street Journal

Now that the high-end housing market is improving, more homeowners and brokers are spinning old yarns to sell new listings, with mixed results. While a select few properties command a hefty premium for their links to mainstay architects and A-list celebrities—a New York townhouse designed by architect Stanford White sold for $42 million last year—many others claim a place in the annals of Americana to stand out from the crowd.

In August, Sotheby's International Realty launched a historic homes section on its luxury listings website. John Passerini, vice president of interactive marketing, said the section was created because searches for such homes are growing; in 1½ months, the section had about 38,000 property views. "During the economic downturn, real estate was totally practical, and it was not romantic," said Jud Henderson, a managing member of Callaway Henderson Sotheby's International Realty based in Princeton, N.J. Now that prices are rising, buyers have the confidence to shop with their emotions again, he added.

ENLARGE

Historians say the exact location of the Hamilton-Burr duel is in dispute. One theory puts the showdown near the New Jersey side of the Lincoln Tunnel.
Everett Collection; Alamy

But in today's ad-saturated, marketing-savvy environment, the standard of what might be considered "historic" has grown more generous, encompassing sites where events might (or might not) have taken place, and including lesser events that don't make most textbooks.

Marketing for the Patterson Mansion, a roughly 36,400-square-foot home in Washington, D.C., plays up the fact that President Calvin Coolidge stayed there while the White House was under renovation in 1927. It is listed for $26 million, but "would just be square footage," without its historic pedigree, and would therefore list for a fraction of the price without it, said Michael Rankin, principal and managing partner of TTR Sotheby's International Realty, which has the listing. He added that historic homes can command around 20% more than comparable new homes on a price per-square-foot basis in the Georgetown area of D.C.

ENLARGE

A Beverly Hills home on the market for $25.58 million was built for Bert Lahr, who played the Cowardly Lion in 'The Wizard of Oz.' Past owners include Betty Grable and Don Johnson.
Everett Collection

In Beverly Hills, Calif., a 1941 home designed by Paul R. Williams, a prominent African-American architect, was built for Bert Lahr, who played the Cowardly Lion in "The Wizard of Oz." The home passed on to Betty Grable, Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson before being bought by current owner Guy Attal, president of fashion company Fabrizio Gianni, in 1999 for $2.55 million, according to public records. Mr. Attal, 61, has since doubled the size of the home to roughly 12,000 square feet and added a guesthouse and two-lane bowling alley, he said. While the compound was built out in a similar style to the Williams home, less than half of the space is technically "historic."

Now the property is listed for $25.58 million, with prominent mentions in the marketing materials of its prior celebrity owners. While it has remained on the market since November 2012, listing agent Joyce Rey of Coldwell Banker Previews International said the property is leased through December at $100,000 a month. Ms. Rey admitted that it can be hard to assess the value of a celebrity connection, especially in star-studded Beverly Hills, but in the case of Mr. Attal's property the name-dropping has helped generate leads. "It gives them certain bragging rights," she said of prospective buyers.

A Luxury Home With History

The home may be recent, but the area surrounding this Weehawken, N.J. home has ties to the infamous Hamilton-Burr duel. View a 360-degree image.

The demand for more obscure and increasingly complicated history reports on homes is leading some real-estate agents to seek out home genealogists. According to Kenyatta Berry, president of the Association of Professional Genealogists, the number of members who claim researching home history as a specialty has grown from 5% to about 10% year over year, in part because home sellers see the value in historic provenance.

Tim Gregory, a Pasadena, Calif.-based historian known as the Building Biographer, has been in the business for 20 years but said this has been his best year since the recession. He charges brokers and homeowners about $500 for historical reports and $1,000 or more for more detailed narratives. He has been credited by clients with discovering homes designed by prominent Southern California architect Wallace Neff, Paul Williams, and trailblazing designer and builder Anna Latham.

Then there is the Weehawken, N.J. property and its possible link to the Hamilton-Burr duel. While many historians agree that the home is located somewhere in the vicinity of the duel (the house is on Hamilton Avenue), the exact location is disputable, said Lauren Sherman, chairperson of the Weehawken Historical Commission, partially because the story has been retold and recast in popular history. Adding to the confusion is a bust of Hamilton. Located near the house, it is said to be where he laid his head after being shot (also untrue, Ms. Sherman said). Stuart Fisk Johnson, president of the Aaron Burr Association, believes that the true location of the duel is about one-eighth of a mile away, near the New Jersey side of the Lincoln Tunnel.

Ms. Ross, who previously lived in Princeton, N.J., said whether her home is precisely on the site or not, she still appreciates the uniqueness of the story. "In Princeton, everything was 'Washington slept here, and Washington slept there.' It became a joke." So far, she said, most prospects have been international buyers who aren't interested in the stories.

ENLARGE

A Miami Beach, Fla., home, once owned by Al Capone, sold this year for about $7.5 million. The seller said he could have sold the property for more if he had torn down the home and rebuilt.
Associated Press

Sometimes a house can have historical value, but the nature of that history can make it nearly unsalable. Stigmatizing events such as violent crimes can stick to a home for years. A murder—even one long in the past—might cause a loss of value of 15% to 25%, said Randall Bell, an appraiser with Bell Anderson & Sanders in Laguna Beach, Calif.

In Miami Beach, Fla., Peter L. Corsell, a 35-year-old tech entrepreneur, didn't bat an eye when he heard his 1920s, 6,100-square-foot Mediterranean home with 100 feet of waterfront overlooking Biscayne Bay was owned by gangster Al Capone, or that Mr. Capone died in the home from complications with syphilis. Mr. Corsell started reading books about the one-time bootlegger and chatted with neighbors about Mr. Capone's softer side: Neighbors told him Mr. Capone entertained orphans at the home and hosted Catholic charity events.

When Mr. Corsell decided to sell the home earlier this year, he said he wouldn't consider offers from buyers seeking to tear down the home and start over on the 30,000-square-foot lot. "It gave me great personal joy to save it," he said. He sold the home for about $7.5 million to a French buyer, down from an original asking price of $9.5 million. (The new owner was more interested in the architecture than Mr. Capone, he said.) Had he torn it down and built new, he said he could have gotten double that. One of the listing agents, Jill Hertzberg of the Jills Team at Coldwell Banker, said a nearby property of the same lot size with a home built in 2004 sold for $14.5 million.

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